NationofChange is a nonprofit organization, and this website is funded by readers like you. Please support our work. Donate or give monthly.

A recent viral article published by EcoWatch has inaccurately reported that U.S. Bank is the “first major bank to stop financing pipeline construction.” If you take a close look at U.S. Bank’s 2017 Environmental Responsibility Policy, you’ll see it only committed to cease “project financing.” There’s the rub. Despite this new policy, U.S. Bank continues to provide hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate financing to pipeline companies for general use, including pipeline construction.

So while they may not be providing project-level loans, U.S. Bank is certainly responsible for the continuing construction of thousands of pipelines.

“Just as weapon manufacturers are responsible for the terror their products reign, by backing big oil, these banks are responsible for the pipelines that violently desecrate indigenous lands and waters,” says Jacqueline Fielder (Mnicoujou Lakota, Hidatsa) an organizer of the San Francisco Defund DAPL Coalition.

The difference between project-level vs. corporate-level financing is important.

2018 Peace Calendars are here!

Pipeline companies often do not need to structure or disclose their capital flows down to the project level. For example, the entire Dakota Access pipeline system, including its connections to Texas and Louisiana, has an estimated price tag of $5.5 billion, but only $2.5 billion was structured as project-level financing.

Now they say they will stop “project financing”? U.S. Bank knows that the average consumer would not pay attention to the complicated bigger picture, so it was a very clever public relations move – and many green groups bought it.

If U.S. Bank is going to stop financing pipelines, it has to stop lending at the corporate level, too. As early as July, we should get a chance to see if U.S. Bank’s new policy is just words.

On July 2, 2017, the credit agreement EQT has with U.S. Bank and others is set to expire. Marathon, a shipper on and a 9 percent stakeholder of DAPL, has an agreement involving U.S. Bank that expires in late July 2017. Let’s wait to cheer U.S. Bank until it puts its money where its mouth is.

Now is the time to step up our demands that banks divest from industries that endanger our future generations, says Rachel Heaton (Muckleshoot Tribe) of Mazaska Talks. “We know there are always loopholes through which banks will try to pass off responsibility, but we will continue to resist until these banks completely divest from all pipeline and fossil fuel corporations and incorporate the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of Indigenous peoples into their corporate lending structures.”

Get news the mainstream media doesn't want you to see

Mazaska Talks is an indigenous-led grassroots campaign to defund the companies building DAPL and all four tar sands crude oil pipelines proposed out of Canada: Keystone XL, Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain, Enbridge’s Line 3, and Energy East. The campaign is led by the 121 First Nations and Tribes united by the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion, and a coalition of grassroots indigenous groups: Mazaska Talks, Last Real Indians, Honor the Earth, Indigenous Environmental Network, Sacred Stone Camp, and International Indigenous Youth Council.

RECOMMENDED SITES

At NationofChange, our mission is to help people create a more compassionate, responsible, and value-driven world, powered by communities that focus on positive solutions to social and economic problems.